CAPTAIN COLBURNE HAS OCCASION TO SEE LIFE IN A HOSPITAL.
When Colburne came to himself he was lying on the ground in rear of the
pieces. Beside him, in the shadow of the same tuft of withering bushes,
lay a wounded lieutenant of the battery and four wounded artillerists. A
dozen steps away, rapidly blackening in the scorching sun and sweltering
air, were two more artillerists, stark dead, one with his brains bulging
from a bullet-hole in his forehead, while a dark claret-colored streak
crossed his face, the other's light-blue trousers soaked with a dirty
carnation stain of life-blood drawn from the femoral artery. None of the
wounded men writhed, or groaned, or pleaded for succor, although a sweat
of suffering stood in great drops on their faces. Each had cried out
when he was hit, uttering either an oath, or the simple exclamation
"Oh!" in a tone of dolorous surprise; one had shrieked spasmodically,
physically crazed by the shock administered to some important nervous
centre; but all, sooner or later, had settled into the calm, sublime
patience of the wounded of the battle-field.
The brass Napoleons were still spanging sonorously, and there was a
ceaseless spitting of irregular musketry in the distance.
"Didn't the assault succeed?" asked Colburne as soon as he had got his
wits about him.
"No sir--it was beat off," said one of the wounded artillerists.
"You've had a faint, sir," he added with a smile. "That was a smart
tumble you got. We saw you go over, and brought you back here."
"I am very much obliged," replied Colburne. His arm pained him now, his
head ached frightfully, his whole frame was feverish, and he thought of
New England brooks of cool water. In a few minutes Lieutenant Van Zandt
appeared, his dark face a little paler than usual, and the right
shoulder of his blouse pierced with a ragged and bloody bullet-hole.
"Well, Captain," said he, "we have got, by Jove! our allowance of
to-day's rations. Hadn't we better look up a doctor's shop? I feel, by
the everlasting Jove!--excuse me--that I stand in need of a sup of
whiskey. Lieutenant--I beg your pardon--I see you are wounded--I hope
you're not much hurt, sir--but have you a drop of the article about the
battery? No! By Jupiter! You go into action mighty short of ammunition.
I beg your pardon for troubling you. This is, by Jove! the dryest
fighting that I ever saw. I wish I was in Mexico, and had a gourd of
aguardiente."
By the way, I wish the reader to understand that, when I introduce a "By
Jove!" into Van Zandt's conversation, it is to be understood that that
very remarkably profane officer and gentleman used the great Name of the
True Divinity.
"Where is the company, Lieutenant?" asked Colburne.
"Relieved, sir. Both companies were relieved and ordered back to the
regiment fifteen or twenty minutes ago. I got this welt in the shoulder
just as I was coming out of that damned hollow. We may as well go along,
sir. Our day's fight is over."
"So the attack failed," said Colburne, as they took up their slow march
to the rear in search of a field hospital.
"Broken up by the ground, sir; beaten off by the musketry. Couldn't put
more than a man or two on the ramparts. Played out before it got any
where, just like a wave coming up a sandy beach. It was only a regiment.
It ought to have been a brigade. But a regiment might have done it, if
it had been shoved in earlier. That was the time, sir, when you went off
for reinforcements. If we had had the bully old Tenth there then, we
could have taken Port Hudson alone. Just after you left, the Rebs raised
the white flag, and a whole battalion of them came out on our right and
stacked arms. Some of our men spoke to them, and asked what they were
after. They said--by Jove! it's so, sir!--they said they had
surrendered. Then down came some Rebel General or other, in a tearing
rage, and marched them back behind the works. The charge came too late.
They beat it off easy. They took the starch out of that Twelfth Maine,
sir. I have seen to-day, by Jove! the value of minutes."
Before they had got out of range of the Rebel musketry they came upon a
surgeon attending some wounded men in a little sheltered hollow. He
offered to examine their hurts, and proposed to give them chloroform.
"No, thank you," said Colburne. "You have your hands full, and we can
walk farther."
"Doctor, I don't mind taking a little stimulant," observed Van Zandt,
picking up a small flask and draining it nearly to the bottom. "Your
good health, sir; my best respects."
A quarter of a mile further on they found a second surgeon similarly
occupied, from whom Van Zandt obtained another deep draught of his
favorite medicament, rejecting chloroform with profane politeness.
Colburne refused both, and asked for water, but could obtain none. Deep
in the profound and solemn woods, a full mile and a half from the
fighting line, they came to the field hospital of the division. It was
simply an immense collection of wounded men in every imaginable
condition of mutilation, every one stained more or less with his own
blood, every one of a ghastly yellowish pallor, all lying in the open
air on the bare ground, or on their own blankets, with no shelter except
the friendly foliage of the oaks and beeches. In the centre of this mass
of suffering stood several operating tables, each burdened by a
grievously wounded man and surrounded by surgeons and their assistants.
Underneath were great pools of clotted blood, amidst which lay amputated
fingers, hands, arms, feet and legs, only a little more ghastly in color
than the faces of those who waited their turn on the table. The
surgeons, who never ceased their awful labor, were daubed with blood to
the elbows; and a smell of blood drenched the stifling air, overpowering
even the pungent odor of chloroform. The place resounded with groans,
notwithstanding that most of the injured men who retained their senses
exhibited the heroic endurance so common on the battle-field. One man,
whose leg was amputated close to his body, uttered an inarticulate
jabber of broken screams, and rolled, or rather bounced from side to
side of a pile of loose cotton, with such violence that two hospital
attendants were fully occupied in holding him. Another, shot through the
body, lay speechless and dying, but quivering from head to foot with a
prolonged though probably unconscious agony. He continued to shudder
thus for half an hour, when he gave one superhuman throe, and then lay
quiet for ever. An Irishman, a gunner of a regular battery, showed
astonishing vitality, and a fortitude bordering on callousness. His
right leg had been knocked off above the knee by a round shot, the stump
being so deadened and seared by the shock that the mere bleeding was too
slight to be mortal. He lay on his left side, and was trying to get his
left hand into his trousers-pocket. With great difficulty and grinning
with pain, he brought forth a short clay pipe, blackened by previous
smoking, and a pinch of chopped plug tobacco. Having filled the pipe
carefully and deliberately, he beckoned a negro to bring him a coal of
fire, lighted, and commenced puffing with an air of tranquillity which
resembled comfort. Yet he was probably mortally wounded; human nature
could hardly survive such a hurt in such a season; nearly all the leg
amputations at Port Hudson proved fatal. The men whose business it is to
pick up the wounded--the musicians and quartermaster's people--were
constantly bringing in fresh sufferers, laying them on the ground,
putting a blanket-roll or havresack under their heads, and then hurrying
away for other burdens of misery. They, as well as the surgeons and
hospital attendants, already looked worn out with the fatigue of their
terrible industry.
"Come up and see them butcher, Captain," said the iron-nerved Van Zandt,
striding over prostrate and shrinking forms to the side of one of the
tables, and glaring at the process of an amputation with an eager smile
of interest much like the grin of a bull-dog who watches the cutting up
of a piece of beef. Presently he espied the assistant surgeon of the
Tenth, and made an immediate rush at him for whiskey. Bringing the flask
which he obtained to Colburne, he gave him a sip, and then swallowed the
rest himself. By this time he began to show signs of intoxication; he
laughed, told stories, and bellowed humorous comments on the horrid
scene. Colburne left him, moved out of the circle of anguish, seated
himself on the ground with his back against a tree, filled his pipe, and
tried to while away the time in smoking. He was weak with want of food
as well as loss of blood, but he could not eat a bit of cracker which a
wounded soldier gave him. Once he tried to soothe the agony of his
Lieutenant-Colonel, whom he discovered lying on a pile of loose cotton,
with a bullet-wound in his thigh which the surgeon whispered was mortal,
the missile having glanced up into his body.
"It's a lie!" exclaimed the sufferer. "It's all nonsense, Doctor. You
don't know your business. I won't die. I sha'n't die. It's all nonsense
to say that a little hole in the leg like that can kill a great strong
man like me. I tell you I sha'n't and won't die."
Under the influence of the shock or of chloroform his mind soon began to
wander.
"I have fought well," he muttered. "I am not a coward. I am not a
Gazaway. I have never disgraced myself. I call all my regiment to
witness that I have fought like a man. Summon the Tenth here, officers
and men; summon them here to say what they like. I will leave it to any
officer--any soldier--in my regiment."
In an hour more he was a corpse, and before night he was black with
putrefaction, so rapid was that shocking change under the heat of a
Louisiana May.
Amid these horrible scenes Van Zandt grew momentarily more intoxicated.
The surgeons could hardly keep him quiet long enough to dress his wound,
so anxious was he to stroll about and search for more whiskey. He
talked, laughed and swore without intermission, every now and then
bellowing like a bull for strong liquors. From table to table, from
sufferer to sufferer he followed the surgeon of the Tenth, slapping him
on the back violently and shouting, "Doctor, give me some whiskey. I'll
give you a rise, Doctor. I'll give you a rise higher than a balloon.
Hand over your whiskey, damn you!"
If he had not been so horrible he would have been ludicrous. His
Herculean form was in incessant stumbling motion, and his dark face was
beaded with perspiration. A perpetual silly leer played about his wide
mouth, and his eyes stood out so with eagerness that the white showed a
clear circle around the black iris. He offered his assistance to the
surgeons; boasted of his education as a graduate of Columbia College;
declared that he was a better Doctor than any other infernal fool
present; made himself a torment to the helplessly wounded. Upon a Major
of a Louisiana regiment who had been disabled by a severe contusion he
poured contempt and imprecations.
"What are you lying whimpering there for?" he shouted. "It's nothing but
a little bruise. A child, by Jove! wouldn't stop playing for it. You
ought to be ashamed of yourself. Get up and join your regiment."
The Major simply laughed, being a hard drinker himself, and having a
brotherly patience with drunkards.
"That's the style of Majors," pursued Van Zandt. "_We_ are blessed, by
Jove! with a Major. He is, by Jove! a dam incur--dam--able darn coward."
(When Van Zandt was informed the next day of this feat of profanity he
seemed quite gratified, and remarked, "That, by Jove! is giving a word a
full battery,--bow-chaser, stern-chaser and long-tom amidships.")
"Where's Gazaway? (in a roar). Where's the heroic Major of the Tenth? I
am going, by Jove! to look him up. I am going, by Jove! to find the
safest place in the whole country. Where Gazaway is, there is peace!"
Colburne refused one or two offers to dress his wound, saying that
others needed more instant care than himself. When at last he submitted
to an examination, it was found that the ball had passed between the
bones of the fore-arm, not breaking them indeed, but scaling off some
exterior splinters and making an ugly rent in the muscles.
"I don't think you'll lose your arm," said the Surgeon. "But you'll have
a nasty sore for a month or two. I'll dress it now that I'm about it.
You'd better take the chloroform; it will make it easier for both of
us."
Under the combined influence of weakness, whiskey and chloroform,
Colburne fell asleep after the operation. About sundown he awoke, his
throat so parched that he could hardly speak, his skin fiery with fever,
and his whole body sore. Nevertheless he joined a procession of
slightly wounded men, and marched a mile to a general hospital which
had been set up in and around a planter's house in rear of the forest.
The proprietor and his son were in the garrison of Port Hudson. But the
wife and two grown-up daughters were there, full of scorn and hatred; so
unwomanly, so unimaginably savage in conversation and soul that no
novelist would dare to invent such characters; nothing but real life
could justify him in painting them. They seemed to be actually
intoxicated with the malignant strength of a malice, passionate enough
to dethrone the reason of any being not aboriginally brutal. They
laughed like demons to see the wounds and hear the groans of the
sufferers. They jeered them because the assault had failed. The Yankees
never could take Port Hudson; they were the meanest, the most dastardly
people on earth. Joe Johnson would soon kill the rest of them, and have
Banks a prisoner, and shut him up in a cage.
"I hope to see you all dead," laughed one of these female hyenas. "I
will dance with joy on your graves. My brother makes beautiful rings out
of Yankee bones."
No harm was done to them, nor any stress of silence laid upon them. When
their own food gave out they were fed from the public stores; and at the
end of the siege they were left unmolested, to gloat in their jackal
fashion over patriot graves.
There was a lack of hospital accommodation near Port Hudson, so bare is
the land of dwellings; there was a lack of surgeons, nurses, stores, and
especially of ice, that absolute necessity of surgery in our southern
climate; and therefore the wounded were sent as rapidly as possible to
New Orleans. Ambulances were few at that time in the Department of the
Gulf, and Colburne found the heavy, springless army-wagon which conveyed
him to Springfield Landing a chariot of torture. His arm was swollen to
twice its natural size from the knuckles to the elbow. Nature had set to
work with her tormenting remedies of inflammation and suppuration to
extract the sharp slivers of bone which still hid in the wound
notwithstanding the searching finger and probe of the Surgeon. During
the night previous to this journey neither whiskey nor opium could
enable him to sleep, and he could only escape from his painful
self-consciousness by drenching himself with chloroform. But this
morning he almost forgot his own sensations in pity and awe of the
multitudinous agony which bore him company. So nearly supernatural in
its horror was the burden of anguish which filled that long train of
jolting wagons that it seemed at times to his fevered imagination as if
he were out of the world, and journeying in the realms of eternal
torment. The sluggish current of suffering groaned and wailed its way on
board the steam transport, spreading out there into a great surface of
torture which could be taken in by a single sweep of the eye. Wounded
men and dying men filled the state-rooms and covered the cabin floor and
even the open deck. There was a perpetual murmur of moans, athwart which
passed frequent shrieks from sufferers racked to madness, like
lightnings darting across a gloomy sky. More than one poor fellow drew
his last breath in the wagons and on board the transport. All these men,
thought Colburne, are dying and agonizing for their country and for
human freedom. He prayed, and, without arguing the matter, he wearily
yet calmly trusted, that God would grant them His infinite mercy in this
world and the other.
It was a tiresome voyage from Springfield Landing to New Orleans.
Colburne had no place to lie down, and if he had had one he could not
have slept. During most of the trip he sat on a pile of baggage, holding
in his right hand a tin quart cup filled with ice and punctured with a
small hole, through which the chilled water, dripped upon his wounded
arm. Great was the excitement in the city when the ghastly travellers
landed. It was already known there that an assault had been delivered,
and that Port Hudson had not been taken; but no particulars had been
published which might indicate that the Union army had suffered a
severe repulse. Now, when several steamboats discharged a gigantic
freight of mutilated men, the facts of defeat and slaughter were
sanguinarily apparent. Secessionists of both sexes and all ages swarmed
in the streets, and filled them with a buzz of inhuman delight.
Creatures in the guise of womanhood laughed and told their little
children to laugh at the pallid faces which showed from the ambulances
as they went and returned in frequent journeys between the levee and the
hospitals. The officers and men of the garrison were sad, stern and
threatening in aspect. The few citizens who had declared for the Union
cowered by themselves and exchanged whispers of gloomy foreboding.
In St. Stephen's Hospital Colburne found something of that comfort which
a wounded man needs. His arm was dressed for the second time; his ragged
uniform, stiff with blood and dirt, was removed; he was sponged from
head to foot and laid in the first sheets which he had seen for months.
There were three other wounded officers in the room, each on his own
cot, each stripped stark naked and covered only by a sheet. A Major of a
Connecticut regiment, who had received a grapeshot through the lungs,
smiled at Colburne's arm and whispered, "Flea-bite." Then he pointed to
the horrible orifice in his own breast, through which the blood and
breath could be seen to bubble whenever the dressings were removed, and
nodded with another feeble but heroic smile which seemed to say, "This
is no flea-bite." Iced water appeared to be the only exterior medicament
in use, and the hospital nurses were constantly drenching the dressings
with this simple panacea of wise old Mother Nature. But in this early
stage of the great agony, before the citizens had found it in their
hearts to act the part of the Good Samaritan, there was a lack of
attendance. Happy were those officers who had their servants with them,
like the Connecticut Major, or who, like Colburne, had strength and
members left to take care of their own hurts. He soon hit upon a device
to lessen his self-healing labors. He got a nurse to drive a hook into
the ceiling and suspend his quart cup of ice to it by a triangle of
strings, so that it might hang about six inches above his wounded arm,
and shed its dew of consolation and health without trouble to himself.
In his fever he was childishly anxious about his quart cup; he was
afraid that the surgeon, the nurse, the visitors, would hit it and make
it swing. That arm was a little world of pain; it radiated pain as the
sun radiates light.
For the first time in his life he drank freely of strong liquors.
Whiskey was the internal panacea of the hospital, as iced water was the
outward one. Every time that the Surgeon visited the four officers he
sent a nurse for four milk punches, and if they wanted other stimulants,
such as claret or porter, they could have them for the asking. The
generosity of the Government, and the sublime beneficence of the
Sanitary Commission supplied every necessary and many luxuries. Colburne
was on his feet in forty-eight hours after his arrival, ashamed to lie
in bed under the eyes of that mangled and heroic Major. He was promoted
to the milk-toast table, and then to the apple-sauce table. Holding his
tin cup over his arm, he made frequent rounds of the hospital, cheering
up the wounded, and finding not a little pleasure in watching the
progress of individual cases. He never acquired a taste, as many did,
for frequenting the operating-room, and (as Van Zandt phrased it) seeing
them butcher. This _chevalier sans peur_, who on the battle-field could
face death and look upon ranks of slain unblenchingly, was at heart as
soft as a woman, and never saw a surgeon's knife touch living flesh
without a sensation of faintness.
He often accompanied the Chief Surgeon in his tours of inspection. A
wonder of practical philanthropy was this queer, cheerful, indefatigable
Doctor Jackson, as brisk and inspiriting as a mountain breeze, tireless
in body, fervent in spirit, a benediction with the rank of Major. Iced
water, whiskey, nourishment and encouragement were his cure-alls. There
were surgeons who themselves drank the claret and brandy of the Sanitary
Commission, and gave the remnant to their friends; who poured the
consolidated milk of the Sanitary Commission on the canned peaches of
the Sanitary Commission and put the grateful mess into their personal
stomachs; and who, having thus comforted themselves, went out with a
pleasant smile to see their patients eat bread without peaches and drink
coffee without milk. But Dr. Jackson was not one of these self-centred
individuals; he had fibres of sympathy which reached into the lives of
others, especially of the wretched. As he passed through the crowded
wards all those sick eyes turned to him as to a sun of strength and
hope. He never left a wounded man, however near to death, but the poor
fellow brightened up with a confidence of speedy recovery.
"Must cheer 'em--must cheer 'em," he muttered to Colburne. "Courage is a
great medicine--best in the world. Works miracles--yes, miracles."
"Why! how _are_ you, my old boy?" he said aloud, stopping before a
patient with a ball in the breast. "You look as hearty as a buck this
morning. Getting on wonderfully."
He gave him an easy slap on the shoulder, as if he considered him a well
man already. He knew just where to administer these slaps, and just how
to graduate them to the invalid's weakness. After counting the man's
pulse he smiled in his face with an air of astonishment and admiration,
and proceeded, "Beautiful! Couldn't do it better if you had never got
hit. Nurse, bring this man a milk-punch. That's all the medicine _he_
wants."
When they had got a few yards from the bed he sighed, jerked his thumb
backward significantly, and whispered to Colburne, "No use. Can't save
him. No vitality. Bone-yard to-morrow."
They stopped to examine another man who had been shot through the head
from temple to temple, but without unseating life from its throne. His
head, especially about the face, was swollen to an amazing magnitude;
his eyes were as red as blood, and projected from their sockets, two
awful lumps of inflammation. He was blind and deaf, but able to drink
milk-punches, and still full of vital force.
"Fetch him round, I _guess_," whispered the Doctor with a smile of
gratification. "Holds out beautiful."
"But he will always be blind, and probably idiotic."
"No. Not idiotic. Brain as sound as a nut. As for blindness, can't say.
Shouldn't wonder if he could use his peepers yet. Great doctor, old
Nature--if you won't get in her way. Works miracles--miracles! Why, in
the Peninsular campaign I sent off one man well, with a rifle-ball in
his heart. _Must_ have been in his heart. There's your room-mate, the
Major. Put a walking cane through him, and _he_ won't die. Could, but
won't. Too good pluck to let go. Reg'lar bull terrier."
"How is my boy Jerry? The little Irish fellow with a shot in the groin."
"Ah, I remember. Empty bed to-morrow."
"You don't mean that there's no hope for him?"
"No, no. All right. I mean he'll get his legs and be about. No fear for
that sort. Pluck enough to pull half a dozen men through. Those
devil-may-care boys make capital soldiers, they get well so quick. This
fellow will be stealing chickens in three weeks. I wouldn't bet that I
_could_ kill him."
Thus in the very tolerable comfort of St. Stephen's Colburne escaped the
six weeks of trying siege duty which his regiment had to perform before
Port Hudson. The Tenth occupied a little hollow about one hundred and
fifty yards from the rebel fortifications, protected in front by a high
knoll, but exposed on the left to a fire which hit one or more every
day. The men cut a terrace on their own side of the knoll, and then
topped the crest with a double line of logs pierced for musketry, thus
forming a solid and convenient breastwork. On both sides the
sharpshooting began at daybreak and lasted till nightfall. On both
sides the marksmanship grew to be fatally accurate. Men were shot dead
through the loopholes as they took aim. If the crown of a hat or cap
showed above the breast-work, it was pierced by a bullet. After the
siege was over, a rebel officer, who had been stationed on this front,
stated that most of his killed and wounded men had been hit just above
the line of the forehead. Every morning at dawn, Carter, who had his
quarters in the midst of the Tenth, was awakened by a spattering of
musketry and the singing of Minie-balls through the branches above his
head, and even through the dry foliage of his own sylvan shanty. Now and
then a shriek or oath indicated that a bullet had done its brutal work
on some human frame. No crowd collected; the men were hardened to such
tragedies; four or five bore the victim away; the rest asked, "Who is
it?" One death which Carter witnessed was of so remarkable a character
that he wrote an account of it to his wife, although not given to noting
with much interest the minor and personal incidents of war.
"I had just finished breakfast, and was lying on my back smoking. A
bullet whistled so unusually low as to attract my attention and struck
with a loud smash in a tree about twenty feet from me. Between me and
the tree a soldier, with his great coat rolled under his head for a
pillow, lay on his back reading a newspaper which he held in both hands.
I remember smiling to myself to see this man start as the bullet passed.
Some of his comrades left off playing cards and looked for it. The man
who was reading remained perfectly still, his eyes fixed on the paper
with a steadiness which I thought curious, considering the bustle around
him. Presently I noticed that there were a few drops of blood on his
neck, and that his face was paling. Calling to the card-players, who had
resumed their game, I said, 'See to that man with the paper.' They went
to him, spoke to him, touched him, and found him perfectly dead. The
ball had struck him under the chin, traversed the neck, and cut the
spinal column where it joins the brain, making a fearful hole through
which the blood had already soaked his great-coat. It was this man's
head, and not the tree, which had been struck with such a report. There
he lay, still holding the New York Independent, with his eyes fixed on a
sermon by Henry Ward Beecher. It was really quite a remarkable
circumstance.
"By the way, you must not suppose, my dear little girl, that bullets
often come so near me. I am as careful of myself as you exhort me to
be."
Not quite true, this soothing story; and the Colonel knew it to be false
as he wrote it. He knew that he was in danger of death at any moment,
but he had not the heart to tell his wife so, and make her unhappy.